


You Deserve Love

by Habie



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:35:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21943009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Habie/pseuds/Habie
Summary: “No you don’t.”Aziraphale blinked, mouth slightly agape. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but this was probably the farthest thing from it.He wasn’t sure how to respond. He had prepared for a number of scenarios in his head, for all of the ways he’d thought this conversation could have gone. But this was none of them. He didn’t have a script prepared or practiced. “Excuse me?” He finally settled on.“You don’t love me.” Crowley was staring at the floor, clutching his cup like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to this reality. “Or, you do, I guess. But it’s different. It doesn’t count. You love everything.”
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 191





	You Deserve Love

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift for l3o-lion on tumblr as part of the Good Omens Secret Santa! I hope they like it. :D And you too, I guess? It would be cool if you did, too.
> 
> "Tell me what you've witnessed  
> If the price of life is hell  
> Well no one ever had to sell me on how nice a fire smells" Watsky / Welcome to the Family  
> >>>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEqs91ZCAgc

“No you don’t.”

Aziraphale blinked, mouth slightly agape. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but this was probably the farthest thing from it.

He wasn’t sure how to respond. He had prepared for a number of scenarios in his head, for all of the ways he’d thought this conversation could have gone. But this was none of them. He didn’t have a script prepared or practiced. “Excuse me?” He finally settled on.

“You don’t love me.” Crowley was staring at the floor, clutching his cup like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to this reality. “Or, you do, I guess. But it’s different. It doesn’t count. You love everything.”

The angel tapped the side of his wineglass a few times before putting it on the back room coffee table. “How can you say that?”

“It’s part of the gig; comes with the territory. Y’know. Demon, irredeemable. Unloveable.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I?”

Crowley could hardly remember a time when he didn’t love Aziraphale. The time existed, of course. They hadn’t always known each other, and then there was that period where he didn’t have the right word to describe this feeling. Love - romantic love - affection, the pure magnetism of wanting to spend as much time as conceivably possible with one person… They weren’t concepts at first, there weren’t words and definitions. But that didn’t change anything. Not really. Crowley knew what he felt.

A rose by any other name and all that.

“I see you’ve just given away your literal god given sword,” he’d thought for just one moment about saying on that first day. “I bet we could break at least three more cosmic laws before sundown if we really try.”

“You could tempt me to anything,” he’d thought so loud in Rome he was afraid everyone in the bar could hear it.

“Of course I was here to rescue you,” he bit back in France. “I’d save you from anything, anywhere, anytime. Just think about being in danger and I’ll be there in a moment, come hell or high water.”

Except for the one time when hell did stop him from protecting Aziraphale.

Except for how they were opposites, black and white, oil and water, hereditary enemies.

Except for how difficult Crowley knew he could be. Either too clingy or too aloof, rude, loud, standoffish, evil... He could list his own shortcomings for days, his own anxiety whispering in his year in every available moment of quiet.

“Yes, Crowley. My dear, dear boy. You are being ridiculous.”

He blew out a raspberry in reply.

“Stop that.”

Crowley did, but only in the form of silence and long meaningful eye contact with the floor.

“Why would you think that?” Aziraphale pushed gently after a few moments in a quiet voice.

Crowly shrugged in response.

“That’s not an answer my dear.” Aziraphale slid himself just a few inches closer on Crowley’s usual couch of choice. The angel usually sat in the armchair across the room, but the change had felt right this evening. He placed a hand on Crowley’s nervously wringing hands anyway. “Well? Why don’t I?”

“It’s just… you know.”

“I don’t.”

“Nkg,” Crowley started, meaningful words or goodness forbid, entire sentences getting stuck in his throat and lost. “Who you are. _Who I am_. We’re just... y’know. Incompatible.”

Aziraphale’s eyebrow shot up in dubiousness and scrutiny. “Incompatible? Us? After everything? You really think that after your whole ‘on our own side’ speech?”

“I mean… no. It’s just. Why - why would you? When I’m Nnngk… me.”

The angel’s silence was long and deafening. He stared at Crowley with a hard investigatory expression that Crowley could swear was producing its own heat. “Do you really mean to tell me, my darling, stupid boy,” he started finally, in an tone that was playful and affectionate but with a seriousness that could never been mistaken and giving the demon’s hand a strong squeeze. “Do you really mean to say that I don’t love you because you don’t love yourself?”

“Ngk,” Crowley said.

“That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Six thousand years on Earth and that takes the proverbial cake.”

“Now you’re just being rude,” Crowley mumbled, his shoulders raising past his ears in a way that made him seem to shrink slowly into the upholstery.

“I love you, Crowley,” Aziraphale repeated, ignoring the quiet pout and the loud body language. “I love you the way poets write about. I love you differently than I love the rest of the almighty’s creations. And if I’m being very honest, I don’t always love all of those. I love you the way you love me.”

Crowley shook his head, his mind yelling from every corner as he tried to grapple with the thoughts and organize them all into boxes. Cartmentalize, organize, deal with it all one at a time.

Sometimes Crowley would disappear from the world for months or years at a time. He would get into bed and nap until the burden of existence was less heavy or just turn into a snake a find a warm rock in the middle of the park to sun himself on. That was always a fun treat for any unsuspecting passersby.

He didn’t feel that way as often anymore. Since the apocalypse apoca-didn’t he had stopped focusing on the big picture - none of that mattered. It had hardly mattered to him before, but after he’d come to terms with what heaven was, how little he actually ever wanted to go back there, what being truly free from all of that felt like… Crowley could go weeks in a row without thinking about what they may be up to- maybe if he was very very lucky it would turn into months and years.

Right now became a thing he could enjoy, time with his touchstone without fear of the ramifications. They’d both already walked through the hellfire for this ( _Is that a saying?_ He thought. _It should be a saying, I’ll make it a saying_.); they deserved to be free.

But putting all of that responsibility on Aziraphale didn’t seem fair. He didn’t ask to be a demon’s sanity anchor any more than he’d asked to be involved with canceling the apocalypse or telling an archangel where to shove it. Everything had just sort of happened around him.

And Crowley had brought it.

He’d suggested the arrangement. He’d pitched averting Armageddon and becoming responsible for the antichrist - not that they had in the end, but that was neither here nor there. Aziraphale wouldn’t have even given away the sword if Crowley hadn’t gotten the humans kicked out of Eden.

He’d been the catalyst for everything.

And some things he was proud of. Most things were harmless inconveniences, pranks really. The slightest opportunity for humans to let themselves turn. Much of his work hadn’t resulted directly or indirectly in hurting the angel, but some of it had.

Too much of it had.

And how could he love someone like that?

“I just-” he tried to explain, Aziraphale’s hand feeling heavy and warm on his. “It’s - It’s only that-” The words were there and then he opened his mouth and they were gone. All beginnings and no conclusions.

Aziraphale’s hand gave his a squeeze. “It’s alright, dear. Everything is fine now.”

“It’s not! You- You don’t- I’ve done so much shit. It’s my fault you and heaven- that you can’t- That they-”

“It’s not your fault Gabriel didn’t like me.”

His tone was authoritative and final and perhaps just a little louder than it needed to be and Crowley shut his mouth reflexively.

“It’s not your fault that any of them didn’t like me. They just didn’t, they never did. I came to terms with that ages ago, eons. You’re not responsible for anyone but yourself.”

“But some of the things I did hurt you,” he said quietly boring a hole in the already threadbear carpet with his eyes. “Not intentionally maybe, but y’know, consequences and … stuff.”

“You’ve never once hurt me. Purposefully or otherwise. Much the opposite.”

Crowley inhaled, sharp and deep and moved to pull his hand back but the angel’s grip had no give.

“You deserve love,” he said with another squeeze.

“I mean, obviously, I’m great,” Crowley floundered, forcing a laugh that sounded more like a mixture between a sob and a bark. “But you- you’re-”

“You deserve love.”

**Author's Note:**

> As always, feel free to come be my friend on  
> Tumblr at CallMeHabie  
> Instagram at Habie_Cosplays (I'm working on lots of fun cosplays) &  
> Twitter at Habie_Cosplays.  
> Tell me the fic sent you, I'll love it!  
> I also have a linktree, which may be a ton easier to navigate. ---> https://linktr.ee/habie_cosplays


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